Traditional medicine has, for centuries, utilized medicinal products of various herbs and other plants either on their own or in combination with others.
Traditionally, medications made from such plants may involve the process of slowly heating the plant material in a suitable carrier liquid such as water or alcohol so as to break down the plant material to form a drink or a liquid for direct application or, upon drying, a powder or similar. Such traditional methods have generally been performed by small practitioners employing household apparatus such as pots or similar vessels for the slow heating of the plant material and carrier liquid.
By contrast, other organizations such as existing pharmaceutical companies have analyzed plant materials to try and ascertain particular active constituents within the plant and rely on either complex processing to extract that particular active compound or the production of generic equivalents of that compound. In some instances, medications made from single active compounds may not be effective in the eyes of those pursuing more traditional methods as it removes the opportunity of synergy with other constituents of the plant or constituents within a mixture of plants.
The commercial scale production of traditional medicines has not always proved to be economic. The up scaling of small scale boiling of individual preparations to large scale apparatus utilizes a large amount of energy in the heating operation to the extent that some products may no longer prove economically viable for such large scale production.